Last surviving widow of Civil War solider dies

[Hiroshi2]

Civil War widow laid to rest in 1860s-style ceremony




Jun 12, 9:53 PM CDT




ELBA, Ala. (AP) -- Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, was buried Saturday in an 1860s-style ceremony complete with war re-enactors after three days of tributes celebrating her life.

Martin, 97, died May 31 nearly 140 years after the Civil War ended. The last widow of a Union veteran, Gertrude Janeway, died last year in Tennessee at age 93.

Martin's body first lay in repose Thursday and Friday at the First White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery.

Members of Company E, 15th Alabama re-enactor group carried Martin's flag-draped casket out of the First Assembly of God Church in Elba on Saturday afternoon following her funeral.

Women dressed in black southern belle dresses with black veils covering their faces followed behind carrying silk black roses.

Chuck Linderman, who knew Martin personally and made the Confederate flag that was draped over her casket, said she would wrap herself in the flag whenever she was cold.

"She wasn't happy until she was wrapped up and kept warm," he said. "It touches my heart now to see her lying underneath it."

The Olde Towne Brass Band from Huntsville played nineteenth Century period heritage music as family, friends and others gathered to pay their respects.

Martin's caretaker, Dr. Ken Chancey gave her eulogy, saying she was a very witty person who loved a good joke. He said Martin, who grew up poor and often went without shoes on her feet, was content with whatever she had.

Martin was born in Dannely's Crossroads in south Alabama to a poor sharecropper's family. She was a 21-year-old widow with a young child when she met and married 81-year-old William Jasper Martin in 1927.

William Martin, who served as a private in the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, died in 1932 after having one child with his wife. Two months later, she married her late husband's grandson, Charlie Martin, who died in 1983.

She lived in obscurity and poverty most of her life until the Sons of Confederate Veterans learned about her past in 1996. They started taking her to conventions and turned her into the belle of Civil War history buffs.

Martin was laid to rest at the New Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery, just down the street from where she was born and raised. She was buried alongside Charlie Martin who she was married to for 50 years.

Gerald Moore from the Sons of Confederate Veterans said Saturday that Martin symbolized a great treasure for those with southern heritage.

"It's one of our last living links to a grand old lady," he said. "She was moving, she was a great person with an outgoing personality and she is a piece of southern pride."






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I can't believe anybody who was even remotely connected to that era was still alive in 2004. But then again, I guess this also means that slavery is not as far removed from our society as some would like to think..............



I saw this on the 10'o'clock news just a few minutes ago and all the people there were like, "this is our last link to the past, we've lost history today", and they almost sounded like they crying. Whatever.

And then in the story it says she married her husband's grandson. Freakish enough she married somebody 60 years older than her. I thought it was kinda odd that somebody with a "link" to Civil War era would only just now, in 2004, get around to dying. But that's how that worked out.



The part about her marrying her husband's grandson wasn't mentioned in the newscast on TV, lol.

[mr. x]

^---the civuh war waz not 'bout no black hatred, it was 'bout huh-white pride

[Kuchana]

There were some positive and yet negative aspects of the Civil War.

It does seem unbelievable that someone connected to the Civil War just died but it also reminds us of the past and our link to it.

[Hiroshi2]

I saw on FOX news at 10 that some woman in Arkansas came forward and said that in fact she was the last surviving soilder of a Civil War veteran. She married a dude when she was 19 and he was 86. She claimed she did it because of poverty.

[mr. x]

Originally Posted by Hiroshi2

I saw on FOX news at 10 that some woman in Arkansas came forward and said that in fact she was the last surviving soilder of a Civil War veteran. She married a dude when she was 19 and he was 86. She claimed she did it because of poverty.

not to judge but yeah, the south does it differently

[Hiroshi2]

Originally Posted by mr. x

not to judge but yeah, the south does it differently

Dude they do that out in California too, what's up with all those models dating old ass dudes then waiting for them to die so they can suck up the money from his will (i.e. Anna Nicole Smith).




j/k



I don't really care what anybody says about the South.